Ken Garen, CPA, Co-Founder and President, UBCC

Tuesday, March 31, 2015

Facebook accused of tracking all users even if they
delete accounts, ask never to be followed

Network tracks its users so that it can give them more
tailored advertising

By Andrew Griffin Tuesday 31 March 2015

A new report claims that Facebook secretly installs
tracking cookies on users’ computers, allowing them to follow users around the
internet even after they’ve left the website, deleted their account and
requested to be no longer followed.

Academic researchers said that the report showed that the
company was breaking European law with its tracking policies. The law requires
that users are told if their computers are receiving cookies except for
specific circumstances.

Facebook’s tracking — which it does so that it can tailor
advertising — involves putting cookies or small pieces of software on users’
computers, so that they can then be followed around the internet. Such
technology is used by almost every website, but European law requires that
users are told if they are being given cookies or being tracked. Companies
don’t have to tell users if the cookies are required to connect to a service or
if they are needed to give the user information that they have specifically
requested.

But Facebook’s tracking policy allows it to track users
if they have simply been to a page on the company’s domain, even if they
weren’t logged in. That includes pages for brands or events, which users can
see whether or not they have an account.

Facebook disputes the accusations of the report, it told
The Independent.

“This report contains factual inaccuracies,” a Facebook
spokesperson said. “The authors have never contacted us, nor sought to clarify
any assumptions upon which their report is based. Neither did they invite our
comment on the report before making it public.

“We have explained in detail the inaccuracies in the
earlier draft report (after it was published) directly to the Belgian DPA, who
we understand commissioned it, and have offered to meet with them to explain
why it is incorrect, but they have declined to meet or engage with us. However,
we remain willing to engage with them and hope they will be prepared to update
their work in due course”.

The report does not have any legal standing, and was written
by independent academics.

With respect to its European data, Facebook is regulated
by the Irish Data Protection Commissioner, who checks that Facebook is acting
within the EU’s Data Protection Directive. As part of that regulation, Facebook
is regularly audited.

Facebook has a page on its site that gives users’
information about cookies and how they are used on the network. The company
makes clear that cookies are used for the purposes of advertising and other
functions, and that users can opt out of such tracking if they wish to.

Almost all Americans now realize this. Most still aren't
bothered by it.

A poll released this month - two years after startling
revelations about the government's digital surveillance capabilities - shows 9
out of 10 Americans recognize their digital lives aren't secret. Yet clear
majorities said they weren't overly concerned about the government snooping
around their calls and emails.

"I am not doing anything wrong, so they can monitor
me all they want," one user told researchers from the Pew Research Center.

That view worries a growing coalition of privacy experts
and advocates trying to speed up efforts to block surreptitious peeking into
our digital habits.

Their task isn't easy.

Americans - more than Web users abroad, experts say -
have come to accept a semi-public digital life. Private businesses make
billions of dollars from sweeping up the crumbs of information digital users
leave behind. In exchange for all that secret data, private businesses offer a
relatively seamless and low-cost Web experience most consumers prefer.

Privacy software can be expensive and is almost always
clumsy. And the government wants in: Citing security concerns, the authorities
seek "backdoor" access to email accounts and phone records.

So privacy experts are stepping up efforts to convince
consumers of the need for digital privacy. A fundamentally private Web won't be
a reality, they say, until ordinary Americans demand broad protection from
government and business intrusion into their phone and computer use.

"If anyone in society is going to have privacy, then
everybody has to have privacy," said Alan Fairless, CEO of SpiderOak, a
company that offers encrypted data storage for consumers.

Some early-adopting digital-savvy consumers have started
to seek out and invent privacy protection tools, he said. That work may
eventually trickle down more broadly to less tech-handy cellphone users and Web
surfers.

It hasn't yet partly because most Americans seem
satisfied with their current digital experience. Prices are low and access is
simple precisely because users can trade their data for an easy Web experience.

"People are very willing to sacrifice privacy for
convenience," said Aaron Deacon, managing director of KC Digital Drive, a
local group exploring issues related to Internet use and access.

Pew's research shows that over the past two years - since
the disclosures of former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden -
roughly a fifth of Americans have changed the way they use various digital
tools. They change email passwords more regularly, for example, and turn to
programs to obscure Web surfing habits.

Other users manage passwords through websites such as
LastPass or Blur, a step security experts say is essential for protecting
unauthorized access to your digital trail.

Some users establish different accounts with different
privacy goals. Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton now faces criticism
for sending and receiving emails stored on her own in-house server in order to
protect some communications from public disclosure.

Yet more complicated privacy protection efforts like
encoding and decoding emails remain a difficult task for most users. Many
abandon the effort, effectively surrendering privacy for simplicity and speed.

The Pew survey found just 2 percent of email users who
know about potential government surveillance actually encrypt their digital
messages.

"The failure is in making easy-to-use tech,"
said Mark Jaycox of the Electronic Freedom Foundation, a California-based
digital advocacy group. "It's well-known we need to do better at making
encryption easier."

A company called ChatSecure, for example, offers free
software allowing cellphone users to send coded messages. Yet its developers
admit that encrypting even the simplest texts can confuse most of us.

"One of the biggest challenges when creating
security software," the company says, "is ensuring it's usable by
normal humans."

Even so, the push to simplify privacy protection
mechanisms is picking up speed. Major Internet companies such as Google and
Yahoo are working on simpler email encryption programs. Other, smaller firms
offer off-the-shelf software that promise user privacy.

Broad use of privacy mechanisms in the digital world
could provoke a backlash - from private businesses that make millions from
their access to digital data and from the government, which wants quick access
to phone calls and emails for security reasons.

"Social media and the Internet is the primary way in
which these terrorism organizations are communicating," President Barack
Obama said in January. "And when we have the ability to track that in a
way that is legal, conforms with due process, rule of law and presents
oversight, then that's the capability that we have to preserve."

Some officials have argued for "backdoor" access
to encrypted communications, giving the government quiet access to emails and
phone calls that users may inaccurately believe are secure.

The idea angers civil libertarians and tech groups.

"We have a good policy standard: the U.S.
Constitution," said Jeffrey Mittman, director of the Missouri chapter of
the American Civil Liberties Union. "There are limits on the government's
ability to search and invade Americans' privacy."

Fairless, with SpiderOak, said back doors for encrypted
data are a bad idea.

"Back doors are almost never tightly
controlled," he said. "If there's a back door, it's basically
impossible to guarantee only the good people use them for good reasons."

A company called Wickr offers free "military-grade
encryption of text, picture, audio and video," its website says. It, too,
resists efforts for backdoor government access.

"While all governments must protect their citizens,
we as citizens and as companies must stand up for one of the pillars of freedom
- privacy," the company says.

Concerns about truly private digital technologies aren't
limited to governments. Private companies now make millions of dollars by
tracking online habits and selling that information to others.

The White House recently proposed a Consumer Privacy Bill
of Rights designed to protect online habits from improper use by private firms.
The measure would require businesses to tell consumers what data is being
gathered - and offer "reasonable means to control the processing of
personal data."

Some industry groups have criticized the plan.

"The proposal could hurt American innovation and
choke off potentially useful services and products," the Consumer
Electronics Association said.

At the same time, Internet advocacy groups say the bill
doesn't go far enough.

"The bill should provide individuals with more
meaningful and enforceable control over the collection, use and sharing of
their personal information," a coalition of digital and consumer lobbying
groups wrote the White House in early March.

It’s 2020. The New England Patriots, winners of six
straight Super Bowls, are having yet another routine meeting with the
Commissioner’s Office.

Deputy NFL Commissioner Tom Brady and his chief of staff,
Rob Gronkowski, OK a rule change that forgives the Patriots for illegally
taping other teams and deflating football over the preceding years. Meanwhile,
members of the Patriots continue to happily contribute funding for the
commissioner’s new 45-room castle in Turks and Caicos, and Bill Belichick
agrees to continue coaching the commissioner’s 12-year-old son in Pop Warner
football.

Would that bother anyone? Because the above is pretty
much going on today, only the team is called Google and the commissioner is the
president of the United States.

Sure, since we’re talking about politics, the giving and
taking of favors works in a slightly more indirect way. But only slightly. As
Michael Kinsley used to say, the scandal about corruption in Washington is not
the stuff that’s illegal but the stuff that’s legal.

A former Google officer is the president’s chief
technology adviser. Google employees contributed more to President Obama’s
re-election than did employees of any other company except Microsoft. Google
lobbyists met with Obama White House officials 230 times. By comparison, lobbyists from rival
Comcast have been admitted to the inner sanctum a mere 20 or so times in the
same period.

Oh, and on Election Night 2012, guess where Google
executive chairman Eric Schmidt was? Working for the president. In the
president’s campaign office. On a voter-turnout system designed to help the
president get re-elected.

Obama lieutenant David Plouffe boasts: “On Election Night
[Schmidt] was in our boiler room in Chicago,” he told Bloomberg News, in a
story that revealed that for the campaign Schmidt “helped recruit talent,
choose technology and coach the campaign manager, Jim Messina, on the finer
points of leading a large organization.”

Schmidt was especially fond of a madcap corner of the
Obama campaign office known as “the Cave,” where, at 4:30 every day, staffers
would dance madly under a disco ball to the tune of a mashup of Psy’s “Gangnam
Style” and an automated campaign phone call made to prospective voters.

Favors beget favors. And hey, presto, the FTC, in 2012,
ignored the recommendations of its own staffers, which accused Google of
abusive trade practices for burying competitors in their search results and
recommended a lawsuit.

Google lobbyists have been pushing for implementation of
“net neutrality” regulations, particularly a “Title II” provision that would
benefit Google. President Obama helpfully came out in support of the plan,
including Title II, which was slightly embarrassing because Obama’s FCC chair,
Tom Wheeler, had favored a different approach. Wheeler promptly reversed course
and backed the Obama-Google plan.

Right before the FCC report was due, but before it was
made public, the FCC pulled another odd reversal, removing 15 pages of policy
Google apparently found out about but didn’t like.

Google has the power to bump an article it doesn’t like
off the table and under the rug.

FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai said that the changes came
about after “a last-minute submission from a major California based company.” I
wonder which company he’s talking about. In-N-Out Burger?

It’s not like Google is ungrateful for all of this
special attention. When the newly launched ObamaCare website was plagued by
evil spirits, guess which company was sent to fix it?

Google’s proton packs helped kill off the ObamaCare
site’s goblins, but the country got slimed.

Still, all of this is easily forgiven compared to what’s
coming next: politically filtered information.

Google says that in the future, its determinations about
what is true and what is untrue will play a role in how search-engine rankings
are configured.

Google has the power to bump an article it doesn’t like
off the table and under the rug. Even moving information off the first page of
search results would effectively neutralize it: According to a 2013 study, 91.5
percent of Google search users click through on a first-page result.

To put it mildly, your idea of whether Fox News or MSNBC
is a more reliable purveyor of “truth” might differ substantially from your
neighbor’s.

Google’s idea of ranking results based on truth is an
excellent one that it should implement just as soon as it comes up with an
absolutely, unbiased and objective system of determining truth.

I’m not sure the company whose employees ranked second in
all of corporate America in campaign donations to Obama can be termed neutral.
I’m not sure the nation’s most impartial arbiter is a guy who partied to the
sounds of an Obama campaign robocall.

Meet the robot insects that fly, work together and catch
objects like chameleons

30.03.2015 11:19

Automation expert Festo has created three robots inspired
by butterflies, ants and a chameleon. They can fly in packs, self charge, work
in groups and pick up pretty much anything.

The pick of the bunch is the FlexShapeGripper, a grabbing
tool that’s modelled on the incredible tongue of a chameleon. To catch prey,
chameleons’ tongues act like suction devices, grabbing flies in an adhesive,
form-fitting, interlocking hold.

To replicate this, Festo’s gripper is made from an
elastic, silicone cap that adapts to the object it is targeting. It can pick up
multiple things, holding many at a time, and reacts to pretty much any shape.

This could be incredibly useful for a range of
industries, from automated picking businesses to user aids for those with
physical difficulties.

For example Robbie the Robot is a prototype machine made
to assist Joanne O’Riordan, a Cork teenager born without arms or legs. Trinity
College researchers developed ‘hands’ by filling a balloon with coffee
granules.

Inflating it with air meant it could conform with any
shape, sucking the air out would then trap, or grab, it – the FlexShapeGripper
is better still. It could, basically, be revolutionary to the robotics
industry.

Taking flight

Another creation from Festo is its eMotionButterfly.
Incredibly light, flying in packs, GPS and infrared cameras coordinate the
devices.

“The eMotionButterflies impress with an intelligently
employed mechanical system and the smallest possible power units in the
tightest space,” says the company. “The reduced use of materials enables the
true-to-nature flying behaviour.”

It's pretty exceptional that these devices are small and
light enough to ensure flight through the wafting of wings.

Tax Day is
rapidly approaching and most Americans say the federal tax system “should be
completely changed.”

The Pew
Research Center recentlyconducted a pollthat
found a majority of Americans supported “Congress completely changing the
federal tax system.” Pew announced the findings March 19, which showed 59
percent of its respondents agreed with a total overhaul of federal taxation.

Taxpayers’
views were clear from the Pew survey, but the broadcast news networks ignored
that clear sign of tax system dysfunction. ABC, CBS and NBC morning and evening
news shows all ignored Pew’s new poll between March 19 and March 22. Not once
did those broadcasts mention majority support for total reform of the federal
tax system.

On other
questions, Pew survey participants also opposed higher taxes for themselves.
Ninety-three percent of individuals said that they already pay “about the right
amount” or “more than their fair share” in taxes. Only four percent said they
were paying less than their “fair share.”

Conservative
groups responded to the poll saying it looks “like a movement” for tax reform,
and shows a “bipartisan majority” want the federal code overhauled.

“The bottom
line of the Pew Poll: Four percent of Americans think the tax system is
fair. Four percent think they pay less than their fair share. Thus 96
percent of Americans want tax reform that does not raise taxes,” Americans
for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist told MRC Business. “That looks like a
movement.”

National
Taxpayers Union Federal Affairs Manager Nan Swift said while the “Pew
Research Center’s recent poll on federal income taxes shows that Americans
may not agree on how much, and who should pay, a bipartisan majority does agree
that it's time to scrap the code.”

“This is
an opportunity for Congress to enact reforms that would create a fairer,
flatter tax code, one that's less complex and doesn't carve out favors, and
most importantly - one that doesn’t punish success, but spurs economic
development and prosperity,” Swift added.

The
networks’ coverage of taxes revealed far different views on taxes than Pew’s
latest research. ABC, CBS and NBC anchors and reporters often advocated for
higher taxes and slanted coverage of President Barack Obama’s tax policies.

ABCWorld
Newsanchor David
Muirimpliedthat
Americans wanted higher taxes during a discussion with current ABC News
Political Director Rick Klein in December 2010. Muir argued that extending tax
cuts contradicted taxpayers’ wishes, since “voters in the midterms seemed so
concerned about government spending and the deficit.”

Klein then
said that “all this talk in Washington about deficit and debt, and everything
that Congress is set to do is going to make those problems even worse.” This
included tax cuts, which Klein said meant “less revenue coming in.”

NBCTodayco-host Matt Lauer, who earns
somewhere between $22 million and $25 million annually according toCelebrity Net Worth, has also pushed for higher
taxes. HepressedSpeaker
of the House John Boehner, R-Ohio, about whether he would support “tax hikes”
in order to reduce the national debt in an interview May 2011. "Why not
use an increase in revenues? Tax hikes to help with that debt problem?” Lauer
also challenged Boehner about the economic benefits of tax cuts during the
interview.

This liberal
bent on taxes also showed up during NBC’s Sunday talk showMeet
the Press. Host David Gregoryarguedthat
raising taxes on the middle class was required for creating a balanced budget
during an interview with Norquist November 27, 2011. “If you really want
to get serious about the deficit, let the Bush tax cuts expire for everybody,”
Gregory said.

In July
2012, CBSThis Morningco-host Norah O’Donnell absurdlysuggestedthat
raising taxes on middle-class Americans would actually save them money. She
said that middle-class tax cuts cost taxpayers $150 billion that year. She said
later added that Republicans wanted “to make permanent all of the Bush-era tax
cuts, including those for households earning over $250,000. The cost to
taxpayers? An additional $850 billion over the next ten years.”

Even though
the networks frequently opposed tax cuts, they still chose overwhelmingly to
portray Obama as atax cutterbefore
and after winning his first presidential election. The networks described Obama
as cutting taxes more thanfour timesas
often as increasing them between September 1, 2008, and August 31,
2010. This occurred despite the fact Obama’s potential tax hikes were nearly 20
times the size of his tax cuts.

Obama’s
signature triumph, ObamaCare created or increased at least13 taxes, costing the middle class an estimated$377 billion, according to a March 12, 2013, Washington PostFact Checker article. The networks
ignored that ObamaCare would increase taxes in87 percentof
stories between November 17, 2014, and February 17, 2015.

Saturday, March 28, 2015

The National Science Foundation (NSF) is financing the
creation of a system for the “automatic detection” of cyberbullying.

The project was awarded this month to Rutgers University,
which has received $117,102 so far. The real-time, automatic detection of
hurtful online speech is necessary, according to the NSF grant, because
cyberbullying is a “critical social problem.” The grant said 40 percent of
American teenagers have reported being cyberbullied.

“This project aims to define new approaches for automatic
detection of cyberbullying by integrating the relevant research in social
sciences and computer science,” the grant said.

The project will involve searching for keywords and
studying the relationships between teenagers who send and receive mean online
messages.

“Specifically, this research will advance the state of
the art in cyberbullying detection beyond textual analysis by also giving due
attention to the social relationships in which these bullying messages are
exchanged,” the grant said.

“A higher accuracy at detection would allow for better
mitigation of the cyberbullying phenomenon and may help improve the lives of
thousands of victims who are cyberbullied each year,” it said.

The project hopes to employ “social intervention
mechanisms” to prevent cyberbullying. Data on cyberbullying will also “be made
available to the larger research community.”

The project begins in July and is set to last through
June 2017.

The goal of the project is to create “better
cyberbullying detectors.”

“By analyzing the social relationship graph between users
and deriving features such as number of friends, network embeddedness, and
relationship centrality, the project will validate (and potentially refine)
multiple theories in social science literature and assimilate those findings to
create better cyberbullying detectors,” the grant said. “The project will yield
new, comprehensive models and algorithms that can be used for cyberbullying
detection in automated settings.”

The grant added that “text mining” of cyber conversations
is not enough, as the project also seeks to conduct data analysis on a “much
bigger scale.”

Vivek K. Singh, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the
School of Communication and Information at Rutgers University, is leading the
project.

“I have worked on multiple projects including designing a
novel media sharing application, detecting patterns in large scale Twitter
feeds, and analyzing community behavior in social media to design mechanisms to
‘nudge’ people into suitable behaviors,” he writes on his website.

Singh previously studied Twitter hashtags, arguing that
people, “make a conscious decision to hash-tag their post, because they want to
relate it to an event which is relevant to others in the same spatio-temporal
volume.”

Singh did not respond to a request for comment.

The Obama administration has placed a priority on
preventing cyberbullying. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)
runs a website to stop cyberbullying that encourages Americans to report mean
online behavior to law enforcement and schools.

President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama hosted the
first ever White House conference on the subject in 2011.

“If there is one goal of this conference, it is to dispel
the myth that bullying is just a harmless rite of passage or an inevitable part
of growing up,” President Obama said.

Other measures to counter cyberbullying have raised
concerns about privacy and government overreach.

A new law in Illinois to combat cyberbullying allows
school administrators to demand the passwords of student’s social media
accounts. Schools only need a “reasonable cause to believe that a student’s
account on a social network contains evidence that a student has violated a
school’s disciplinary rule of policy,” FOX 2 in St. Louis reported.

Australia is seeking to establish an “Office of the
Children’s e-Safety Commissioner,” who can fine social media networks AU$17,000
a day for not taking down a post that the government has deemed cyberbullying.
A bill working its way through the Australian senate defines cyberbullying as
“seriously threatening, seriously intimidating, seriously harassing, or
seriously humiliating.”